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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was
an American author, poet, abolitionist, naturalist,tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. [wiki]
Quotes by Thoreau: [brainyquote]
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
Faith never makes a confession.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
Things do not change; we change.
Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
What is once well done is done forever.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter who has been a major figure in music for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler, and an apparently reluctant figurehead, of social unrest. A number of his songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin'” became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. (wiki)
Bob Dylan Quotes
— A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
— A song is anything that can walk by itself.
— All I can do is be me, whoever that is.
— At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.
— Chaos is a friend of mine.
— Don’t matter how much money you got, there’s only two kinds of people: there’s saved people and there’s lost people.
— He not busy being born is busy dying.
— I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.
— I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.
— I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.
— I have dined with kings, I’ve been offered wings. And I’ve never been too impressed.
— I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.
— I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.
— Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.
— Money doesn’t talk, it swears.
— No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.
— People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.
— To live outside the law, you must be honest.
— What good are fans? You can’t eat applause for breakfast. You can’t sleep with it.
— When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?
— Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an “inventive” cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence on jazz, shifting the music’s focus from collective improvisation to solo performers. With his distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, or vocalizing using syllables instead of actual lyrics.
Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and deep, instantly recognizable voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong’s influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. (Read more : wikipedia | Louis Armstrong house museum)
Quotes by Louis Armstrong : (wiki | brainyquote | thinkexist)
All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.
Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.
The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician.
There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.
We all do ‘do, re, mi,’ but you have got to find the other notes yourself.
What we play is life.
You blows who you is.
My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn…
There is no such thing as ‘on the way out’ as long as you are still doing something interesting and good; you’re in the business because you’re breathing.
If ya ain’t got it in ya, ya can’t blow it out.
Never play a thing the same way twice.
I don’t let my mouth say nothin’ my head can’t stand.
I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don’t treat me right / shame on you!
Joseph Campbell : From another blog
I really like reading Paulo Coelho’s blog. I have even linked a lot of his pages on this blog, because they are really interesting. Today I would just like to share one of his ‘Characters of the week’. I like these quotes, I hope you do too. (Paulo Coelho’s Blog) (Joseph Campbell : wiki | quotes)
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?
I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave.
Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.
When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.
When people get married because they think it’s a long-time love affair, they’ll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity. When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass ‘armonica’. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania. (wikipedia)
Quotes by Benjamin Franklin: (wiki | thinkexist | brainyquote)
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
A small leak can sink a great ship.
Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.
Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.
All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Applause waits on success. 
As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
Beauty and folly are old companions.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
Beware the hobby that eats.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.
Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.
Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
Fatigue is the best pillow.
Games lubricate the body and the mind.
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
Half a truth is often a great lie.
Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
He does not possess wealth; it possesses him. 
He that can have patience can have what he will.
He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.
He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
He that won’t be counseled can’t be helped.
He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?
How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
Hunger is the best pickle.
I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.
I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.
I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.
If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.
If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.
In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.
In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.
It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.
It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.
It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.
It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
Life’s Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.
Most people return small favors, acknowledge medium ones and repay greater ones – with ingratitude.
Never confuse motion with action.
Nine men in ten are would be suicides.
Observe all men, thyself most.
Our necessities never equal our wants.
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.
She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.
Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.
The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.
There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.
There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
When in doubt, don’t.
When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.
Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.
Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.
Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran (born Gubran Khalil Gubran bin Mikhā’īl bin Sa’ad, January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose. An early example of Inspirational fiction, the book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu. (wikipedia)
Khalil Gibran quotes: (brainyquote | wikiquote)
All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.
Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.
I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.
If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.
If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.
Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.
Love is trembling happiness.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.
Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.
Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.
Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.
Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.
Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’
The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.
The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.
The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.
To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.
What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?
When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give off yourself that you truly give.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.
Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow.
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel – (April 28, 1906, Brno, Moravia, Austria–Hungary – January 14, 1978, Princeton, New Jersey, United States) was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when many, such as Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead and David Hilbert, were pioneering the use of logic and set theory to understand the foundations of mathematics.
Gödel is best known for his two incompleteness theorems, published in 1931 when he was 25 years of age, one year after finishing his doctorate at the University of Vienna. The more famous incompleteness theorem states that for any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe the arithmetic of the natural numbers (Peano arithmetic), there are true propositions about the naturals that cannot be proved from the axioms. To prove this theorem, Gödel developed a technique now known as Gödel numbering, which codes formal expressions as natural numbers.
Quotes by Kurt Gödel – (wiki)
Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.
The notion of existence is one of the primitive concepts with which we must begin as given. It is the clearest concept we have.
The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit.
Consciousness is connected with one unity. A machine is composed of parts.
The active intellect works on the passive intellect which somehow shadows what the former is doing and helps us as a medium.
Philosophy as an exact theory should do to physics as much as Newton did to physics. I think it is perfectly possible that the development of such a philosophical theory will take place within the next hundred years or even sooner.
Reason and understanding concern two levels of concept. Dialectics and feelings are involved in reason.
General philosophy is a conceptual study, for which method is all-important.
Don’t collect data. If you know everything about yourself, you know everything. There is no use burdening yourself with a lot of data. Once you understand yourself, you understand human nature and then the rest follows.
Intuition is not proof; it is the opposite of proof. We do not analyze intuition to see a proof but by intuition we see something without a proof.
To explain everything is impossible: not realizing this fact produces inhibition.
It is a mistake to argue rather than report. This is the same mistake the positivists make: to prove everything from nothing. A large part is not to prove but to call attention to certain immediately given but not provable facts. It is futile to try to prove what is given.
To be overcritical and reluctant to use what is given hampers success. To reach the highest degree of clarity and general philosophy, empirical concepts are also important.
Learn to act correctly: everybody has shortcomings, believes in something wrong, and live to carry out his mistakes.
Rules of right behavior are easier to find than the foundations of philosophy.
True philosophy is precise but not specialized.
By definition, wish is directed to being something. Love is wish directed to the being of something, and hate is wish directed to the nonbeing of something.
The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish.
The maximum principle for the fulfilling of wishes guides the building up of the world by requiring that it be the best possible.
When an extremely improbable situation arises, we are entitled to draw large conclusions from it.
Time is no specific character of being… I do not believe in the objectivity of time. The concept of Now never occurs in science itself…
Quotes about Gödel – (by Rudy Rucker)
Despite his vast knowledge, he still could discuss ideas with the zest and openness of a young man. If I happened to say something particularly stupid or naive, his response was not mockery, but rather an amused astonishment that anyone could think such a thing.
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Gödel’s certainly impressed me as a man who had freed himself from the mundane struggle. I visited him in the Institute office three times in 1972, and if there is one single thing I remember most, it is his laughter. … The conversation and laughter of Gödel were almost hypnotic. Listening to him I would be filled with the feeling of perfect understanding. He, for his part, was able to follow any of my chains of reasoning to its end almost as soon as I had begun it. What with his strangely informative laughter and his practically instantaneous grasp of what I was saying, a conversation with Gödel was very much like direct telepathic communication.
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The last time I spoke with Kurt Gödel was on the telephone, in March 1977. I had been studying the problem of whether machines can think, and I had become interested in the distinction between a system’s behavior and the underlying mind or consciousness, if any.
… I had begun to think that consciousness is really nothing more than simple existence. By way of leading up to this, I asked Gödel if he believed there is a single Mind behind all the various appearances and activities of the world.
He replied that, yes, the Mind is the thing that is structured, but that the Mind exists independently of its individual properties.
I then asked if he believed that the Mind is everywhere, as opposed to being localized in the brains of people.
Gödel replied, “Of course. This is the basic mystic teaching.”
Che Guevara
Ernesto “Che” Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as El Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution. Since his death, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol and global insignia within popular culture.
Some quotes : (brainyquote | wikiquote | thinkexist)
Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.
I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.
I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.
Many will call me an adventurer – and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his platitudes.
Silence is argument carried out by other means.
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.
One must harden without ever losing tenderness.
We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
For a long time man has been trying to free himself from alienation through culture and art…
The beginnings will not be easy; they shall be extremely difficult.
Quotes about Guevara :
Che is a figure who can constantly be examined and re-examined.
Why did they think that by killing him, he would cease to exist as a fighter? … Today he is in every place, wherever there is a just cause to defend.
Che sowed the seeds of social conscience in Latin America and the world, he was a flower prematurely cut from its stem.
What has made Guevara a cultural icon is not his example for poor countries, but his capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youth of the affluent West.
What I appreciated most was his honesty — and his ability to transform negative things into positive things. … he was not compromising. It wasn’t easy unless you shared his vision and believed in it.
He always did what he said he was going to do, That’s why he is still timely.
Che was the most complete human being of our age.
We predict that Guevara will be eulogized as the model revolutionary who met a heroic death.
Che never wavered from his firm revolutionary stand, even as other Cuban leaders began to devote most of their attention to the internal problems of the revolution.
Che’s life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom. We will always honor his memory.
He taught me to think — he taught me the most beautiful thing which is to be human.
Guevara remains a national hero in Cuba where he is remembered for promoting unpaid voluntary work by working shirtless on building sites or hauling sacks of sugar. To this day, he appears on a Cuban banknote cutting sugar cane with a machete in the fields.
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928) is an American autobiographer and poet who has been called “America’s most visible black female autobiographer” by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adulthood experiences. The first, best-known, and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), focuses on the first seventeen years of her life, brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award. Angelou has been highly honored for her body of work, including being awarded over 30 honorary degrees and the nomination of a Pulitzer Prize for her 1971 volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Diiie.
Some quotes : (wiki | brainyquote)
All great achievements require time.
All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
I believe that every person is born with talent.
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
Nothing will work unless you do.
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
Her website : http://mayaangelou.com/
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the great wartime leaders. He served as prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, writer and artist. To date, he is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the first person to be recognised as an honorary citizen of the United States.
During his army career, Churchill saw military action in India, the Sudan and the Second Boer War. He gained fame and notoriety as a war correspondent and through contemporary books he wrote describing the campaigns. He also served briefly in the British Army on the Western Front in the First World War, commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
At the forefront of the political scene for almost fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of the Asquith Liberal government. During the war he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He returned as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. In the interwar years, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative government.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led Britain to victory against the Axis powers. Churchill was always noted for his speeches, which became a great inspiration to the British people and to the embattled Allied forces.
After losing the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition. In 1951 he again became prime minister, before finally retiring in 1955. Upon his death, the Queen granted him the honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen in the world. (More information on Wikipedia)
Some quotes by Winston Churchill (More quotes on wiki | brainyquote)
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed.
You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
Eating words has never given me indigestion.
Great and good are seldom the same man.
He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
I am easily satisfied with the very best.
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
I like a man who grins when he fights.
I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
Never, never, never give up.
“No comment” is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
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